Denis R. McDonough

The way the White House tells it, the U.S. had no choice. For eight years, President Barack Obama has been pleading with Israel to stop building settlements. But it didn't listen. So reluctantly, the president instructed his United Nations ambassador to abstain from a Security Council resolution that affirmed for the first time in 36 years that every Jewish home in East Jerusalem and the West Bank was a "flagrant violation of international law."

Ben Rhodes, Obama's speechwriter and deputy national security adviser, whined about this on Friday after the vote. "There's a huge record on this, and I think it's very unfair and inaccurate to suggest that somehow this was an...

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